Heat exchangers using an impingement cooling principle are known for exchanging heat between different fluids flowing through the exchanger. Some heat exchangers that use the impingement cooling principle are of the impingement plate type. With such heat exchangers, fluid passes through a plurality of holes in a given plate and strikes a solid portion or "impinges" against a subsequent, usually parallel, plate where it moves along the plate to the nearest hole or orifice and passes through the subsequent plate for impingement against a solid portion of the next plate. Eventually, after passing through a series of plates, the fluid leaves the heat exchanger. This impingement cooling principle aids in the heat transfer between the fluid and each plate. Of course, the orifices in adjacent plates are misaligned intentionally so that the fluid must impinge a subsequent plate prior to passing through the orifices thereof. This forces the fluid to impinge against each plate after passing through the previous plate to provide a tortious path for the fluid rather than permitting the fluid merely to flow through holes in a stack of plates.
In my U.S. Pat. No. 4,494,171 to Bland and Niggemann, dated January 15, 1985 and assigned to the assignee of this invention, an impingement cooling apparatus is shown for use in the removal of heat from a heat liberating device. As exemplified in that patent, the impingement cooling principle is carried out by a stack of orifice plates. As with most all prior art, the stack of plates is fitted within a housing. In other words, most prior art utilize a stack of impingement orifice plates to define a core providing an impinging tortious path for one or more fluids. Usually, a manifold or header is provided at one or both ends of the stack of orifice plates or in the housing to provide some sort of "plumbing" to distribute the incoming and outgoing fluid(s) to the interior impingement orifice plates
There is a definite need, particularly in aircraft or aerospace fields, to provide more compact, more efficient and lighter weight components because these parameters are of such critical importance in those fields The problem with many cooling or heat exchanger apparatus which use the impingement principle is that the housing and/or manifolds take up as much or more space than the impingement plates themselves, and the housing and/ or manifold often weighs more than the stack of impingement orifice plates.
This invention is directed toward solving those problems by providing an impingement plate type heat exchanger wherein the stack of plates itself includes the inlets and outlets for the fluids as well as the manifold flow paths for the fluids to be distributed to the tortious flow paths through the impingement orifice plates. Therefore, no extraneous housing means, manifold means or other plumbing components are required.